ICANN will NOT set a date for the next round of new gTLD applications, despite recent pleas from registry operators. That’s according to a letter (pdf) from ICANN chair Steve Crocker to the Registries Stakeholder Group published today. The RySG had asked (pdf) last month for ICANN’s leadership to set a fourth-quarter 2018 deadline for […]

The new “Empowered Community” of ICANN has exercised its power for the first time. The EC on Friday told ICANN that it has approved the ICANN board of directors’ recent resolution to create a new committee tasked with handling various oversight processes. It’s of largely symbolic importance, the first test of whether the EC process […]

ICANN has named two of the host cities for its 2019 public meetings. The community will descend upon Kobe, Japan in March 2019 for the first meeting of the year and will head to Montreal, Canada, for the annual general meeting in November. Both locations were approved by the ICANN board of directors at a […]

The number of cybersquatting complaints filed against .uk domains fell in 2016, according to data out this week from Nominet. The .uk registry said that there were 703 complaints filed with its Dispute Resolution Service in the year, down from 728 in 2015. However, the number of individual domains complained about appears to have increased, […]

ICANN’s Centralized Zone Data Service has some serious shortcomings and needs an overhaul, according to the Security and Stability Advisory Committee. The panel of DNS security experts has confirmed what CZDS subscribers, including your humble correspondent, have known since 2014 — the system had a major design flaw baked in from day one for no […]

ICANN Ombudsman Herb Waye has started monitoring an ICANN mailing list after multiple complaints of disrespectful behavior. Waye this week told participants in the Registration Data Services working group that he is to trawl through their list archives and proactively monitor the group following “multiple complaints regarding behavior that contravenes the ICANN Expected Standards of […]

The US government has been threatening to “close down” Costa Rica’s .cr registry over its refusal to take down a Pirate Bay domain name, according to the registry. Representatives of the US embassy in Costa Rica have been badgering NIC.cr to take down thepiratebay.cr since 2015, according to a letter from Pedro León Azofeifa, president […]

GNSO Council Chair James Bladel has resigned, after it emerged that GoDaddy, his employer, is not eligible for office under registrar rules. He will continue to occupy the post on an interim basis until either his term expires or a new election is held. Bladel was elected to represent the Registrars Stakeholder Group on the […]

ICANN has rejected claims that the .sport gTLD contention set was settled by an arbitrator who had undisclosed conflicts of interest with the winning applicant. Its Board Governance Committee last week decided that Community Objection arbitrator Guido Tawil had no duty to disclose his law firm’s ties to major sports broadcasters when he effectively eliminated […]

An ICANN-commissioned investigation into the fairness of its Community Priority Evaluation process for new gTLDs could wind up before the end of June. In an update Friday, ICANN also finally revealed who is actually conducting the probe, which has been slammed by affected applicants for being secretive. A tentative timeline sketched out in the update […]